Immigrant author pens "victory song

Published 7:00 pm, Monday, September 23, 2002

Divakaruni, who lives in First Colony with her husband and two children, says she was inspired to write from her attempts to find a balance between the American and Indian cultures.

Most of her fictional works and poetry were partly autobiographical, dealing with the immigrant experience.

"After moving to this country, I began to think about who I was, what my culture meant to me and how it was being an Indian woman living in America. Both cultures are part of my life, and I had to learn how to balance them."

After writing several works of adult fiction and poetry, Divakaruni decided to write a children's book after her two boys, ages 8 and 10, asked her to write something for them.

Her older son even gave her some useful suggestions. "He was my at-home editor," she says. "I had always written for adults, so I didn't understand children's vocabulary levels. So, he if he came across something he didn't understand, he would tell me 'kids don't talk like that.'"

Her son was not the only family member to help Divakaruni in her children's book, which also was her first historical book.

She had to do extensive research in Indian history and also drew from some of her mother's experiences growing up on a Bengal farm and living in Calcutta during the 1930's. "I couldn't have imagined the characters and the world of Victory Song without my mother's help," says Divakaruni. "She is blessed with a great memory and gave me many wonderful details. She patiently answered all my questions-from what a village wedding would have been like to what kinds of underwear girls wore. And she described life in Calcutta, a center of India's independence movement, in vivid detail."

Neela: Victory Song is set in 1939 in India, during India's growing independence movement from Great Britain, and follows the story of 12-year-old Neela Sen, who travels to Calcutta to rescue her father when he is imprisoned for marching against British rule

The book is part of the Girls of Many Lands collection, which features historical novels written by acclaimed authors that explore the richness, beauty and unique traditions of the cultures and peoples beyond America's borders, expanding girls' knowledge of different cultures and events that shaped world history

Divakaruni was born in India and lived there until 1976, when at age 19 she left Calcutta and came to the United States. She continued her education and received a master's degree in English from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and a Ph.D from the University of California-Berkeley. Currently, she teaches creative writing at the University of Houston.

To earn money for her education, she held many odd jobs, including babysitting, selling merchandise in an Indian boutique, slicing bread in a bakery, and washing instruments in a science lab. At Berkeley, she lived in the International House and worked in the dining hall. She briefly lived in Illinois, Ohio and Texas, but has spent most of her life in Northern California, which she often writes about.

Divakaruni's work is widely known, having been published in more than 50 magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, and included in more than 30 anthologies. Her works have been translated into 11 languages, including Dutch, Hebrew and Japanese. Her first book of stores, Arrange Marriage, won an American Book Award and the Bay Area Book Reviewers and PEN Oakland awards for fiction. The Vine of Desire, the sequel to her immensely popular adult novel Sister of My Heart, received a Publishers Weekly starred review. Two of her novels, The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart, have been optioned by filmmakers Gurinder Chadha and Suhasini Mani Ratnam for an English film and Tamil TV serial.

Much of Divakaruni's work is partially autobiographical, and she deals with the immigrant experience, which is an important theme in today's world, where the immigrant's voice is rarely heard.

Divakaruni's writing often centers on the lives of immigrant women. She says, "Women in particular respond to my work because I'm writing about them, women in love, in difficulties, women in relationships. I want people to relate to my characters, to feel their joy and pain, because it will be harder to [be] prejudiced when they meet them in real life." Her interest in women began after she left India, at which point she came to reevaluate the treatment of women there. At Berkeley, she volunteered at a women's center and became interested in helping battered women.

In 1991, Divakaruni and a group of friends founded Maitri, a helpline for South Asian women that works with victims of domestic violence and other abusive situations, which eventually led her to write Arranged Marriage, a work that includes stories about the abuse and courage of immigrant women.

She continues to volunteer with Maitri, as well as the Chinmaya Mission, a spiritual organization where she teaches Sunday school to first graders.